


A Bagel

by stammed_cleams



Category: Dimension 20, Fantasy High
Genre: About stuff, Fluff, Growth, M/M, Trauma, True Love, and things, coming home, deep talks, just a talk between dudes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-22
Updated: 2019-11-22
Packaged: 2021-02-17 22:33:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21517531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stammed_cleams/pseuds/stammed_cleams
Summary: Fabian and Riz have made it back home, and Fabian takes a moment to tell him that anything in the world he wants, he'll get it for him.
Relationships: Fabriz
Comments: 9
Kudos: 130





	A Bagel

**Author's Note:**

> hey so idk how dead this fandom is but its worth a shot, right? i liked this little one shot so here it is!

It had only been a week since they had made it back home, and this time wasn’t like the last. Last time they’d never made it out of Elmville - they had always been around the people who could protect them, the mundane always mixed in with the incredible. Sure, the world was in danger, but it didn’t feel like it. It felt like… well, it felt like highschool. Classes and fights, bitterness and coldness, and when it ended they all strolled back home the way they had done every day. Nothing special, nothing new, telling each of their parents about the events of the day just as if they’d aced a math test, or made a new friend.  
This was different. They’d been away from home so long it had become unfamiliar. Still the images of the nightmares they had seen lingered behind their eyes, and it didn’t feel as fun and cute as it had freshman year. Even with the arms of people they loved around them, in their own four walls, they weren’t really home. In their heads they were all somewhere else, and they knew they would be for some time. They’d made it back, but damn, if it wasn’t a long trip.  
It seemed almost funny to Riz, sitting on the rail of the crow’s nest above Fabian’s house, that last time he’d been in this town he was tripping over calling him his best friend, nudging him into hanging out with him like a middle schooler. Back then, he could have never imagine just being here with him. The last year had been a lot, but especially a lot for them. After Fabian’s defeat in Leviathan, he found himself needing somebody to lean on, and Riz, in turn, found himself teaching himself how to be that type of person. Long conversations at night, harrowing talks of dark, dark dreams, reaching out into the darkness for one another. Then after a while there was kissing, and there was holding each other, but that seemed less important. More than any of that what had changed was that neither had any doubt that the person beside them was their best friend - that was what mattered. Fabian was sitting up on the railing next to Riz, one leg propped up under him and the other swinging back and forth down below, a stern look on his face as he stared out with his one eye into the town. He had developed that look only recently, one of maturity and manhood. He’d always thought that when that look came it would be that of Bill Seacaster, merciless and feared - but ultimately, it was his own, and wildly different. It was powerful and menacing, yes, that much was true - but good, too, and dependable. His eyebrows slightly creased, his eyes deep in thought. It was the face of someone considerate and heroic, and deeply loyal.  
Riz looked a little different too. He was sitting beside him, his hands on the railing and both his legs over the side, huge yellow eyes looking over the town. He had hit a growth spurt in the past year, and he was still only part way through getting all his cocaine-induced tattoos removed. But that wasn’t all - he had his hat off now, hair blowing in the wind, and for once his fingers weren’t tapping, his knees weren’t bouncing. His eyes didn’t flicker about in the manner of one trying to keep their mind on a mystery, they settled, in a way that was watching, contemplating. Up on that rail, with the wind in his hair, he could be there with his thoughts, forcing the mysteries away for a few moments and being alone with the place he was. And he thought about his father, and his friends, and Fabian and nightmares and adventures and terrible things - and they hurt him. You could see in his eyes, they hurt him. But he wasn’t running from them anymore. He looked up at Fabian, completely and utterly there with him. By this late, as the sun was setting over the horizon, he looked quite beautiful, the golden light reflecting off of his stern features. He looked back down to Elmville, which was beautiful too. From here he could see the gentle curves of the Thistlespring tree, the dark cloud around Jawbone’s mansion, the cold cement lines of Strongtower Apartments. And yet all the pieces fit together, and the town was cohesive, like all the homes were just branches of the tree with the same roots. And up the town grew, bathed in golden light and painting dark shadows along the green hills.   
Eventually, Fabian broke the silence, lifting an arm and putting an elbow on his knee with a casual gesture towards the horizon. “If you could have anything in the world, right now,” he began, “What would it be?”  
Riz raised his eyebrows, thinking about this for a moment as he looked outward. He took in a breath, and let it out heavily. “A bagel,” he finally said.   
“I’m being serious.”  
“I am also being serious I could really go for a bagel.”  
Fabian looked irked at that, patting Riz gently on the shoulder, “No, I’m trying to be romantic, The Ball, I’m saying that you know, now that we’re back and there’s no… pressing concerns, world ending and all that, I can… get things for you, I can do things for you,” he told him, gesturing into the air, “I’m saying tell me your trophy and I will… win your heart.”  
“Oh,” Riz said, with an understanding nod. “My trophy?”  
“Mm.”  
“Oh, well in that case. A bagel.”  
Fabian rolled his eyes, “Riz!” he said, “I’m trying to do a cool thing, here, be cool!”  
Riz shrugged helplessly, laughing slightly at the situation, “No, I am serious, I am dead serious. You want to win my heart, want to go off and bring me back a love trophy, I would like a… an everything bagel with plain cream cheese from the bakery downtown, you know the place downtown?”  
“Well, if you’re this set on a bagel, I can at least get you something a little more professional-”   
“Nope!” Riz argued stubbornly, “I definitely want the place in town. I would like for you, at your convenience to… to go out, get me an everything bagel with plain cream cheese…” a nervousness started to slip into his voice, as he looked down over the green hills, “And then… come home. So, you know, you’ll get to do your romance ritual or whatever and there’ll be no need to you know… go off sword fighting or going on road trips anymore, or anything like that. I mean I don’t want gold or like the heads of my enemies or whatever I just want…” He tripped on the word he’d meant to say, and eventually came back to its substitute, “A bagel.”  
Fabian looked over to him, touched and awestruck. Gently, he parroted, “A bagel?” he asked. Riz nodded firmly, his expression difficult to read. He pursed his lips, and then looked at Fabian.  
“A bagel,” he said. They looked at each other for a moment, before Fabian looked back down at his legs, as bashful as if they were in middle school again. Riz loved to see him this way - not just because it was cute, but because he was allowing himself not to be cool, not to be debonair. He was just Fabian.   
“Well, I knew you had poor taste, but frankly I’d say this is a bit much,” he said, and Riz laughed.   
“I don’t know what you expected me to say, ‘go cut off the shadow cat’s head’?”  
“Oh, well, I figured some sort of… clue, or something.”  
Riz shrugged. “I’ll stick with my friends. I can get the clues later.” With that, Fabian put a strong arm around him and pulled him roughly into his chest, and then in a distinctly softer movement he lifted Riz’s chin and gently kissed him. Then Riz smiled and leaned further into his chest, ears going down with calm and a gentle smile coming over his face as his eyes fell shut. Fabian looked down at him, amazed. His parents had made it seem like love was a constant stream of gifts and praise, dancing on wires and tripping over misphrased sweet nothings. His father, great man as he was, was always in the doghouse for something, and just as often he was ordering expensive objects or coming back with glorious trophies that it seemed would just barely manage to impress his inscrutable mother. Looking at Riz, he shook his head, bewildered. What had he done to deserve someone who only asked him to be, and for that, he would love him?


End file.
